We All Sing On…

Apr 30, 2026

The Cause & The Facts

Last evening (04.29.26) I attended the Indianapolis screening of Power to the People, the concert film featuring John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The concert took place in Madison Square Garden in New York City on August 30, 1972. There were actually two concerts that day. The film combines the best performances of both shows. There are no off-stage or documentary style scenes. Just the concert.

The concert(s) were for charity. The event raised more than $1.5 million (today, $11.5 million) which is no small chunk of change. The proceeds went to Willowbrook State School, which serves children with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

While the actual concerts featured John & Yoko’s Plastic Ono Band with Elephant’s Memory as well as special guests, including Stevie Wonder, the film featured only John & Yoko’s performances.

The Concert

I want to state up front that the most important aspect of this event to me was the money raised for the disabled children. So kudos to all those who made that happen. Thus, any criticisms I have about the concert pale in comparison to my admiration for those who take on selfless and thankless tasks like these.

Artistically speaking, I expected the concert to be a bit ramshackle and hastily put together, which it was. Lennon even says something to the audience like “Welcome to the rehearsal.” That being said, the band is great and plays with tremendous energy. The musicians are undeniably great players. The sound/mix is amazing. Remixed recently by Paul Hicks and Simon Hilton with Sean Lennon’s supervision, the results are impressive. The sound is full and clear. The visual quality is very good as well. Not overly treated with AI, but cleaned and brightened up. The film utilizes a lot of split screen treatments and I wondered if this was maybe to avoid having to blow the images up too large. The filming overall, like the event, is a little bit haphazard compared to the technology of today. That’s OK. It doesn’t detract from the event.

The Songs, Setlist & Band

The set features Lennon songs from his very early solo career. But while they were not lacking in quality, they were lacking in quantity. John’s songs were interspersed with Yoko’s songs. Yoko Ono is a hot button issue for many people. Personally, I have absolutely no problem with her or how she and John decided to live their lives. But in the context of this concert, I do wish Yoko would’ve brought more variety to how she approached singing her songs. I’ve heard her vocals on many of her recordings and they are done in a more straightforward way. But on this occasion, I thought she overdid the “billy goat” screaming. Singing like that is fine on one song and can be very affective. But that approach used in multiple songs, which involves repeated and random screeching (I’m struggling to think of the most appropriate word here) over the vamping band—even on top of a sax solo and in between vocal phrases on “Hound Dog,” becomes tiresome. Nothing against her. It just gets to be a bit too much of a one-trick pony gimmick when it’s used over and over. So that, I think holds the concert back somewhat from being a lot more fulfilling.

I’m not sure why there were two bass players and two drummers in the band. Using two drummers is not unheard of, but when one of them is Jim Keltner who is so good, I question the need for two. But two bass players is really odd. That doesn’t matter really but I’m just curious as to why they felt that was necessary.

The “Give Peace a Chance” encore was just way, way too long. It was the typical “everyone come on stage and sing along with the closing anthem” thing. I swear, I can’t think of a single time in a concert that I’ve ever thought that that approach worked very well. Anyway, the song starts with a riff/groove that Lennon calls reggae, but it really isn’t. I’m not sure how I would categorize it. More bluesy perhaps. But the regular “Give Peace a Chance” melody did not work over the notes in that riff. Everyone (lots of background singers) starts singing and it sounds terribly out of tune because they can’t find the melody and no one is really leading them properly. Lennon is singing, but doing more of a talking/shouting vocal that isn’t really melodic. This all goes on way too long until Stevie Wonder comes on stage and starts singing a more bluesy melody that actually works with the riff/groove they are playing. He kind of saved the song in my opinion, although he eventually stops singing. Eventually way too many performers, including Allen Ginsberg and Phil Spector come on stage and it just goes on and on and on (we all sing on…)

The Main Man

Of course, the main attraction was John Lennon and the best songs were his. “Imagine” was so moving and actually felt historic in some profound way. I’m not as big a fan of his grittier songs like, “Well, Well, Well” or “It’s So Hard,” but they were really well done. The only Beatles song was “Come Together,” which was more aggressive than The Beatle’s version, but was a great performance despite a little lyric flub. “Mother” was so, so powerful. Insanely real. “Instant Karma” was really cool as well. What a great song. Everything he did was so real and passionate.

By far and away the best thing I came away with though, was what an absolutely amazing singer John Lennon was. We all know this about him. But this film must surely be the best and longest visual document of his vocal talent. I thought he was going to blow out his voice by the end of the show because he was singing with such rawness and energy. But he didn’t. Both his voice and his singing were absolutely incredible from start to finish. Unbelievable. I can’t say enough about his singing. It was stunningly good.

Imagining

I don’t think the historical significance of this concert, both musically, culturally and politically cannot be overstated. And again, the best part is the money raised for the children. That was the point of it all. Power to the People is definitely worth seeing. Sadly, this screening, one of only two in Indianapolis that I know of, only had 16 people in attendance. Time does march on.